INTRODUCTION Patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) have an increased frequency of osteoporosis, mainly because of increased bone resorption. Reduction of disease activity is suggested to reduce bone remodelling. It might also be possible that prednisolone treatment could cause this effect because prednisolone has been shown to arrest the development of joint destruction in early RA. Therefore...

BACKGROUND Asthma self-management plans that include doubling the dose of inhaled corticosteroid when the condition deteriorates improve asthma control. Whether doubling the dose of corticosteroid in isolation is effective is unknown. We undertook a randomised controlled trial to investigate the effects of doubling the dose of inhaled corticosteriods when asthma deteriorates. METHODS 390 indi...

BACKGROUND This study aimed to investigate the benefits of administering perioperative high-dose prednisolone in conjunction with thymectomy in patients with myasthenia gravis. METHODS We retrospectively reviewed data from patients with Myasthenia Gravis Foundation of America Clinical Class I to IIIB who had undergone an extended thymectomy between 1992 and 2009. Perioperative high-dose predn...

OBJECTIVES To assess the efficacy and tolerability of mycophenolate mofetil (MMF) in six patients with myositis refractory to conventional immunosuppressive therapy. METHODS Six patients were identified from hospital notes. All had previously failed to respond to other immunosuppressive treatments. Efficacy was measured as changes in muscle strength, creatine kinase (CK) levels and prednisolo...

background considering the inadequacies of current therapeutic regimens for infantile spasms (is), and the frequent and serious side effects of  some regimens, the ongoing search for more enhanced protocols is understandable. materials and methods: we have compared the therapeutic and adverse effects of vitamin b6 given in high doses with those of prednisolone in a randomized controlled clinica...

BACKGROUND Steroids have been widely used to relief symptoms in the patients with PFAPA syndrome. OBJECTIVES This study was constructed to show the effectiveness of low-dose steroid therapy in patients diagnosed with PFAPA syndrome. METHODS 41 patients (86 febrile attacks) who were diagnosed using the criteria suggested by Thomas et al. were involved in the study. The cases were classified ...

INTRODUCTION Glucocorticoids are a mainstay of anti-inflammatory therapy, but significant adverse effects ultimately limit their utility. Previous efforts to design glucocorticoid structures with an increased therapeutic window have focused on dissociating anti-inflammatory transcriptional repression from adverse effects primarily driven by transcriptional activation. An alternative to this med...

     Neuromyelitis optica (also known as Devic's disease or Devic's syndrome) is an uncommon disorder in pediatric age group, and is characterized by acute or subacute optic neuritis and transverse myelitis. Here we report an 11- year- old female child with relapsing Neuromyelitis optica (NMO) confirmed by positive NMO- IgG antibody and had clinical recovery with high dose methyl prednisolone t...

Cortisone is used in various inner ear disorders such as sudden hearing loss. However, it is not known if the doses of prednisolone employed in therapy increase the cortisol level in the inner ear. To evaluate the level of cortisol within the perilymph after intravenous administration of 125 and 250 mg of prednisolone, serum and perilymph samples of 29 consecutive patients with clinical otoscle...

Twenty-seven patients with myasthenia gravis have been treated with azathioprine in conjunction with pyridostigmine and prednisolone for a total of 138 patient years. Side effects necessitated discontinuation of treatment in only four patients. Treatment with azathioprine was associated with marked clinical improvement in all the remaining 23 patients, resulting in reduction in the dose of pyri...